


Play the Hand You're Dealt

by meridian_rose (meridianrose)



Category: Da Vinci's Demons
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Character of Faith, Community: trope_bingo, Episode: s03e08 La Confessione Della Macchina, Gen, Making The Best of a Bad Situation, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Prayer, Unhealthy Relationships, Unwanted Advances, background Riario
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 11:17:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6049609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meridianrose/pseuds/meridian_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU during s3e08. Lorenzo's rage puts Riario's life in immediate danger, and Vanessa's attempts to point out the political repercussions of killing the Papal Nephew risk him turning his wrath on her too. Please see the notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play the Hand You're Dealt

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a pleasant fic. It is not friendly for Vanessa/Lorenzo shippers. There is suggestion of physical threats and abuse. While there's a glimmer of hope, there is no happy ending, and no resolution is offered. Set during "La Confessione Della Macchina", the most recent episode to date I've seen. It's AU, but if later canon contradicts further, so be it.

"What have you done?" Vanessa whispered, her heart contracting at the sight of the injured count. 

Despite the physician's ministrations, there was still blood on his face and in his hair, one cheek cut open by Lorenzo's ring. Bruising was already showing on the pale skin, one eye was swollen shut, and his lower lip was split. She might have gone so far as to say it was a mercy he was unconscious, if it had not been such cause for concern as the minutes dragged on.

If the guards (and someone was going to pay for letting Riario wander around the Palace unchecked in the first place) hadn't been alerted by the noise, if that commotion hadn't then brought her to see what was going on, Riario would be dead.

The memory of Cellini's death in the council chamber still haunted Vanessa. He had been no friend to Florence, but he hadn't deserved such a brutal death, and the sight of Lorenzo resolutely smashing the man's skull open had made her taste bile. She'd hidden it well; she needed Lorenzo to believe she was completely on his side. It was the only way to keep son safe and close. 

She had no desire to witness Lorenzo commit another brutal murder, and she had no wish to give the Pope more reason to turn his troops on Florence. Yet only her urging the guards to intervene, her begging for Lorenzo to cease, had put a stop to the beating. Even now it might be too late, the damage Lorenzo had inflicted in his rage more than anyone could survive.

"Me?" Lorenzo demanded, turning on her. "He confessed that he killed my beloved Clarice!"

She instinctively took a step back. "Why would he confess to such an act?"

"To receive his punishment," Lorenzo roared, eyes wild. "I should have finished the job. You dare to think otherwise?"

"Please," she said, calm and demure. "I worry only that you give the Pope cause to bring his wrath on us. Riario is the Papal Nephew. His death, however justified, cannot go unpunished by the Holy Father."

Lorenzo glowered at her. "He deserves to die."

"Not in private," she offered. Remembering Leo's arrest for sodomy, calculated to damage his reputation even if he escaped death, and yet giving him chance to extricate himself from his predicament, she said, "Let the people of Florence see the monster he is. Tell them what he has done. If he survives, have him confess in public. A trial would prove that you are not a tyrant."

Lorenzo wasn't entirely convinced. It took every inch of her courage to take a step towards him again, as cautiously as one might approach a snarling dog.

"You are a widower who deserves justice," she soothed. "That cannot be in doubt. What harm can a trial do?"

He stroked at his untidy beard. "Perhaps." He placed one hand on her, his fingers at the base of her neck, his thumb at her throat. She suppressed a shudder, forced a smile. "But if he goes free, I will remember whose idea the trial was."

She nodded, one hand clenched into a fist so tightly she thought she might draw blood, the tilt of her head pressing Lorenzo's thumb further into her flesh.

"You are so clever," Lorenzo said, releasing her. "What would I do without you?"

From a threat one moment to a declaration of affection accompanied by an undisguised lust in his eyes the next; it was often the way with Lorenzo. Never in his wildest throes of mercurial and intense emotions had Leo ever made her feel unsafe the way Lorenzo did.

Lorenzo swept out of the room, hollering orders. Vanessa closed the door and sank to the floor, blinking back tears. Sometimes she thought it might have been better if she'd never left the convent.

If she didn't think Lorenzo would have had her hunted down and killed, taking her son to be raised to be as bloodthirsty as he was, she would have gladly left with Nico. But she could not leave her son and Lorenzo would not suffer Giulio being taken from Florence.

In one breath Signora Cereta had told Vanessa that her life belonged to Giulio and in the next that Vanessa would pay for siding with a tyrant, but siding with Lorenzo was the only way Vanessa could see to keep herself alive with her son at her side. She'd had little choice but to use the cards she'd been dealt, terrible as they were, the best way she knew how to.

She wished Leo were here. He might know how to help Riario; she wasn't sure on the details, but hadn't he just saved the count from kind of poison? Before that, Leo's arcane knowledge had saved Lorenzo; she'd assisted Leo as he had poured his own lifeblood into Lorenzo's veins.

But now the ungrateful Lorenzo would fly into a rage at the very mention of da Vinci's name, heaping the vilest insults upon the man he'd once called brother and detailing the punishments that awaited the artista if he dared show his face in Florence again.

She wished Nico were here, but Lorenzo had sent him away too. Zo had gone with Leo, of course. Andrea was dead. She had no-one to turn to.

In a desperate bid to stem the grief and fear that threatened to overwhelm her, she began to pray. It took ten or twenty Hail Marys before she was calm enough to form coherent thoughts and pleas. No matter how dire the situation, how long the odds, Leo had always come through before, and whatever else had changed in her life, she still believed in God. She swallowed and begged for His mercy.

_Please don't let Riario die. Please don't let the Pope kill us all. Please give me strength and wisdom enough to not provoke Lorenzo. Please don't let Lorenzo kill me in one of his fits of rage. Please don't let him take my son from me. Please let Leo save Italy. Please let Leo and Nico come back for me. Please let there be a way we can all survive this. Please. Please. **Please.**_

**Author's Note:**

> Given that Lorenzo beat a man to death publicly for a lesser offence I'm not even sure how Riario survived, hence the start of the fic.  
> My thinking has always been that Vanessa is in a terrible position. Lorenzo is unstable and violent, a man not known for loyalty towards women, who seems to have forgotten he even has daughters. Vanessa is disposable, the mother of an heir who can be raised by others in her stead. Only Lorenzo's lust might keep her safe, and if it means she must let him bed her, maybe that's her only real option. Similarly, if Lucrezia's seduction for purposes of spying instead of, say, fleeing Italy had been, for example, to keep her sister Amelia safe, I'd have had more sympathy with her actions.  
> This is also a fill for the trope bingo prompt 'against all odds'; no matter how awful things are, Vanessa retains her faith in God and Leo alike.


End file.
